Knowledge academy

Context

Coming across great ideas for new support tools thus making an organisation grow is always beneficial. But making sure that this tool will fit our users' needs and that they will use it is a different challenge! Me and my former team have contributed to the design and the launch of an internal knowledge database within the Marketing Excellence department.

On one corner of the room, there was the Marketing Excellence team, a very dedicated team of marketing and knowledge management specialists, gathering reliable content from all over the world and across the company. This team's purpose was to help marketing professionals, technical managers and sales representatives do the best job with the most efficient marketing tools and presentations. And on the opposite corner, there were the field people, aforementioned marketing professionals, who were lacking new content and updated presentations, with no real information about where to find fresh data. Our Marketing Excellence team knew that in order to link both corners, it had to come up with a great solution, not only practical for both parties, but very well built.

We started with a deep analysis and good understanding of the content. We helped the team to come up with a taxonomy, ensuring that every piece of content would be labelled and identified. Then we guided them towards a good content structure using the Sharepoint global platform already in place throughout the company, once again ensuring that the technological standards are met, and that the future knowledge base will be easily reachable and will match the common structure that collaborators are already familiar with.

But this was just a first step. To ensure that people would use the database, we sampled a precise list of 10 relevant people within the target group and built an interview scenario. I conducted every interview with the sample interviewees, gathering as much naive and neutral data as I could, making sure that my questions and scenario would have minimal impact on what my interlocutor had to say. After the data collection, I performed an analysis and delivered a report and a consultancy on how the final tool should be structured, as well as a communication plan to reach our final users. I ended up creating a simple yet efficient visual identity and an email template that the Marketing Excellence team would use through the rollout and future communication means.

Realisations

project management

definition of the objective and needs

design workshops with the client team

reporting and minutes, communication between team members

facilitation with the IT team

user research

user interviews: scenario creation, interview and data analysis

graphic design

visual identity of the tool

wireframes and prototyping

Outcome

Drive neutral user interviews so the results would not be biased: I had to keep a strong drive through the often 1-hour long interviews and collect as much relevant data as I could.

Dive in an unusual world with a typology of content I was not familiar with.